


Einstein's Secret

by HipericoLotus



Category: Charmed (TV 1998), Charmed (TV 2018), From Eden - Hozier (Music Video)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:48:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29456238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HipericoLotus/pseuds/HipericoLotus
Summary: Here is Wyatt's secret, which Einstein broke open to the world:Time and space are the same.
Relationships: Andrew Hozier-Byrne/Other(s)
Collections: Racebending Revenge





	Einstein's Secret

Here is Wyatt’s secret, which Einstein broke open to the world: time and space are the same.

Space is easier. Still, time has bent to his will since he was a toddler, like a creek parting before a tiny Moses. Time is his.

Except it isn't. His body cannot move through it any more quickly than anyone else’s; he still ages a year at a time, from two to three to four to five, burdened always by the memory of a beloved yet mistrusted face creasing in pain, calling for their father, calling Wyatt’s name. The man seemed ancient and huge at the time, but how many Wyatts have gone back, invisible, to watch? That day his brother was surrounded by ghosts of Wyatt, all of different ages, all gazing upon him, some crying, some laughing, some bored, numb, trying so hard to feel something, anything, even grief. Still he died, for Wyatt has tried to kill the traitor before the athame can reach his brother, has tried to push the youth out of the way, has tried a thousand times to make a millisecond’s impact on the past and nothing will budge. Twice-blessed, Once-And-Future, Promised One, Destroyer, child of what amount to a god and goddess, yet he is powerless in any time but his own. The pink lips still part in pain, almond-shaped eyes closing with it, calling their father by his title for what might as well have been the first time since they met again. Calling his father, then chanting Wyatt’s name, unable to voice his concern: Wyatt, Gideon took Wyatt, Chris tries to say, but Wyatt’s name is all that emerges from those paling lips.

\-----------------------------------------------------------

Wyatt doesn’t see his parents much. The beleaguered couple who made him did not raise him, did not save his brother, did nothing, really, despite their attempts to rescue them both. Wyatt wandered the underworld for years until he stumbled upon another underworld, an entirely human one, not that he could tell the difference. A family took him in, but they were unkind, as were most of those who came after. Wyatt could conjure food and kill threats with his mind. He didn't need a family but got lonely enough, sometimes, to want to join one.

When Wyatt thinks of parents, he thinks of the thieves who stumbled across him one day after breaking into the home of the latest small-town tragedy he had found himself in. They took him into an old, warm, gasoline-scented car and made him remember how to truly laugh. They used magic tricks and antics, conning smiles out of the child they somehow loved - immediately - with childish abandon. They were white, but both had long, frizzy hair and gently detangled Wyatt's curls with a mix of expertise and humility, pulling up YouTube videos of nappy-haired children and murmuring about how soft Wyatt's is. They trimmed it, too, fixing the holes where his last guardian had hacked away at the painfully matted ringlets.

When Wyatt does goes back to see his baby self, once in a great while and mostly to watch his brother watch him, he notices how serious he self was, even then. Not one for big smiles, that child, more of a black-eyed solemn gaze. His brother never laughs much either, nor do his blood parents. Yet the couple coaxed laughter out of him, indelicate and wild in their attempts.

They were arrested two weeks after they found him. It was the longest time Wyatt had ever spent with one family and even years later, his own accent still follows their lilting voices, associating every hint of a brogue with safety, comfort and real smiles.

\---------------------------------------------------------

When their lost boy is found, Wyatt’s face confounds his birth parents. With the exception of the wild couple, he learned facial expressions from a thousand different monsters, vanquished and victor, human and demon; learned the look of anger from the Elder who pursued him; learned the placating grimace like a starving pit bull learns to wag. He learned calming signals, not smiles. The Friends Fallacy, as a certain Malcolm Gladwell likes to call it, applies to Wyatt the feral child more than his parents could ever realize.

At thirteen, his now-little brother is doomed to live only nine years more, and Wyatt can’t decide what he can’t stand the most: to be around the boy or to be parted from him.

It’s his brother’s fourteenth birthday when the Elder finds them and kills their mother.


End file.
